WHO WE ARE

Our beat is the labor front, broadly defined, both geographically and conceptually. We examine the world of work and workers on the job as well as where they live. We examine the issues that affect their everyday lives, with a particular sensitivity towards human rights abuses, environmental concerns and the U.S. drive for global domination. We record their global struggles and provide analysis of their efforts to empower themselves and transform society to provide greater democratic, human, social, political and economic rights. Each program consists of feature stories, generally interviews, within a historical context, often accompanied by sound from demonstrations, rallies or conferences, and complemented and enhanced by poetry and instrumental or vocal -- people's culture.

Over the years Building Bridges has produced a weekly one hour program, Mondays from 7-8 PM EST, covering local, national and international labor and community issues over radio WBAI-Pacifica 99.5 FM in New York.We also produce half hour version, Building Bridges National, which is distribtued to over 40 broadcast and internet radio stations.

For more information you can contact us at knash@igc.org
In Struggle
Mimi Rosenberg & Ken Nash

Attorneys for indigenous activist Leonard Peltier have
submitted a formal application for executive clemency to the Office of the
Pardon Attorney, at the U.S. Department of Justice. An innocent man,
Native American activist Leonard Peltier was wrongfully convicted in connection
with the shooting deaths of two agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation
(FBI) in 1977 and has been imprisoned for over 40 years.

Attorneys
Martin Garbus, who has written numerous briefs that have been submitted to the
United States Supreme Court; a number of which have resulted in changes in the
law on a nationwide basis; participated in drafting several constitutions and foreign laws and been involved
in prisoner exchange negotiations
between governments and Cynthia Dunn, director of a nonprofit corporation that
works with youth on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota
subsequent to having worked for 28 years as an Assistant United States Attorney, where she prosecuted a broad
variety of cases including public corruption and civil rights offenses make the
case for clemency for Leonard Peltier

Unions to Trump: “Pay your hotel workers fair wages and recognize our union!”withBethany Khan, Director of Communications, Culinary Workers Union Local 226
As far as Nevada’s unions are concerned, hotel mogul-turned-Republican
president elect Donald Trump should put his money where his mouth is, and pay
his hotel’s workers in Las Vegas fair and living wages and recognize their
union too. The 500-plus workers, who seek to join Hotel Employees and
Restaurant Employees Local 226, are battling Trump management over union
recognition, wages and working conditions. They say that hotel management
is not only breaking labor law – including by verbal threats and physical
assaults, but that they’re sure not following Trump’s campaign slogan
“Make America Great Again!” So the hotel workers’ Geoconda
Arguello-Kline, secretary-treasurer for the 55,000 member union local, Nevada’s
largest, said “Trump should start right here in Las Vegas with workers at his
hotel. Many of them are immigrants who work hard to provide for their families.
They deserve equal treatment and should be respected for their contributions to
this city,” she added, “I came from Mexico many years ago and became an
American citizen to have a better opportunity for me and my family.” Maria Jaramillo,
a housekeeper at the Trump Las Vegas, told the union “This country is a nation
of immigrants, and we all work hard and deserve to be treated fairly.”++++++++++++++Driscoll’s Harvest of Shame: the stories of the Farmworkers in San Quintin (Mexico) and Skagit County (Washington State) and Why They Say Boycott Driscoll Foodswith. Al Rojas, a Founding Member of the United Farm Workers; current
Pres. , Sacramento Labor Council for Latin American Advancement (AFL-CIO). Eduardo Rosario, President, NYC Chapter, Labor Council for Latin
American Advancement

70,000 farmworkers in the Valley of San Quintin, Baja California (Mexico)
have been waging intermittent strikes, organizing road blockades and mass
mobilizations since March 2015 to demand an increase in their daily wage from
$7.50 per day, an eight-hour workday, health care, overtime pay and vacation
days, an end to the widespread sexual abuse, and, the legal recognition of
their independent union— as the bargaining agent for these 70,000 workers.
These farmworkers pick strawberries, tomatoes, and other
fruit primarily for export to the United States under the label of Driscoll’s,
through its Mexican subsidiary, BerryMex.

The workers describe conditions in San Quintin as rat-infested camps, some without
functioning toilets, where they routinely having their wages illegally
withheld, and face debt after being gouged by the overpricing of necessities
sold at company stores, and with pay so low that it amounts to less than
one-tenth of what U.S. based farmworkers earn. And, how has the Baja
California government responded to the farmworkers, they sent in police to
quash the farmworkers’ protest, severely wounding 70 workers, many with rubber
bullets shot at close range, leaving some of the workers
in critical condition. There’s blood on Driscoll’s fruit and vegetables
and the question is how we can support the farmworkers, who through their
blood, sweat and tears put food on our tables.
*****************To Download or listen to this 26:53 minute program,https://archive.org/details/VegasHotelUnionSaysBoycottTrumpBajaFarmworkersFightBack

withJeffrey Haas, who has an
extensive background in mass defense from his days as a lawyer for Black
Panthers and co-founder of the People’s Law Office, a Chicago lawyers’
collective that rose up to meet its historical moment—the defense of
hundreds of Vietnam War protesters in the aftermath of the 1968 Chicago
Democratic Party convention. The People’s Law Office would go on to
challenge police brutality and prisoner torture, achieving significant
victories and key vindications. Haas as well authored The Assassination of
Fred Hampton: How the FBI and the Chicago Police Murdered a Black
Panther

We’ll celebrate the victory of the denial of the
easement for installation of the Dakota Access Pipeline by the U.S. Army
Corps of Engineers.

Jeffrey Haas, civil rights attorney who joined the legal
team at the

Standing Rock Camp in North
Dakota, where Native Americans and

others have been protesting to stop the Dakota Access
Pipeline joins us

to talk about the momentous occurrence, and why the
struggle isn’t over

and the ligation that remains over the violence
perpetrated against the

protectors.

The pipeline demonstrators injured by rubber bullets,
water cannons and tear gas canisters during the wintry nighttime standoff
with police two weeks ago have filed a class-action lawsuit against the
sheriff of the North Dakota county involved. The suit describes in new
detail the evening of November.20, when more than 200 people protesting the
Dakota Access oil pipeline were injured by “less-than-lethal” weapons. The
lawsuit alleges that sheriff’s deputies and police officers used excessive
force when they deployed impact munitions,like rubber bullets, as well as
explosive tear gas grenades and water cannons against protesters. It argues
that the tactics were retaliatory, punishing those involved for exercising
free

speech rights.

Plus"We beg for your
forgiveness": Veterans join Native elders in celebration
ceremonyWes Clark Jr., the son of retired U.S. Army general and
former supreme

commander at NATO Wesley Clark Sr., was part of a group of
veterans at

Standing Rock one day after the Army Corps announcement.
The veterans

joined Native American tribal elders in a ceremony
celebrating the Dakota

Access Pipeline easement denial. Lakota spiritual leader
and medicine

man Chief Leonard Crow Dog and
Standing Rock Sioux spokeswoman

Phyllis Young were among several Native elders who spoke,
thanking the

As
newly-elected politicians and newly-empowered corporate special interests
threaten an extremist agenda to move the country to the right, working
Americans announced that their four-year-old Fight for $15 will not back
down and that any efforts to block wage increases, gut workers’ rights or
healthcare, deport immigrants, or support racism or racist policies, will be
met with unrelenting opposition. To show their determination in the face of
the seismic shifts in the political climate, workers in the Fight for $15
waged their most disruptive protests yet, expanding their movement to nearly
20 airports serving 2 million passengers a day, and risking arrest via mass
civil disobedience in front of McDonald’s restaurants from Detroit to
Denver. Workers spanning the economy—including baggage handlers, fast-food
cooks, home care workers, child care teachers and graduate assistants—
demand $15 and union rights, no deportations, an end to the police killings
of black people, and politicians keep their hands off Americans’ health care
coverage. *****************play streamdownload

Attend the rally to close the notorious jail marked by violence and
corruption and impervious to substantive reform: Close Rikers Island!We’ll bring you highlights of the rally to Shut Rikers Down! Johnny Perez, a member of the Jails Action Coalition who experienced solitary confinement himself, Akeem Browder the brother of Kalief Brower, who tragically became the face of everything wrong with Rikers when he committed suicide after spending three years there--two of them in solitary--because his
family couldn't afford the bail when he was charged with allegedly stealing
a backpack say SHUT IT DOWN!play streamdownload

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BUILDING BRIDGES BASICS

Building Bridges: Your Community and Labor Report is broadcast weekly in the N.Y.C. to the Metropolitan area over WBAI, Pacifica on Mondays from 7-8 PM EST. Building Bridges and most WBAI Programs are now being archived for 90 Days. They are also being PodCast. These links will be live ca. 15 minutes after the program ends. To listen, download or PodCast archived shows go to http://archive.wbai.org/allshows.php?sort=nameaz

We also produce half hour version, Building Bridges National, Edition which is distributed to over 40 broadcast and internet radio stations.

Minding Business, a semi-monthly on-line publication of the Preamble Collaborative. Minding Business covers grassroots progressive activism and major federal, state, and local legislative initiatives directed toward increasing employment and countering the anti-worker, anti-consumer and anti-environmental shenanigans of corporations and their friends in political office. Each issue also contains economic news and editorials by Preamble staff and guest writers.

National Interfaith Committee For Worker Justice- people of faith who educate, organize, and mobilize the religious community in the U.S. on issues and campaigns that will improve wages, benefits, and working conditions for workers, especially low-wage workers.